[TYPO3-ect] 5.0 roadmap - continuation or new branch

[Michael Scharkow]

Elmar Hinz wrote:

> B) Completly new branch:
> 
> Michaels proposal for 5.0 is, to start a completly new branch from scratch.
> It is free to eliminta all lapses, because it doesn't need to consider any
> backwards compatibilty. It can make use of all advantages PHP 5 provides.

Hi Elmar,

I never proposed starting from scratch, but I argued that a lot of the 
components in TYPO3 core are basically too complex to develop or even 
maintain, like TCEMAIN, so compared to refactoring old stuff a rewrite 
seems even less work. However, this does not at all mean that we start 
with a blank file because a lot of components can very well be used, so 
the whole development is incremental rather than from scratch.

> It would take a long time and big efforts of the community to get 5.x to
> stable. Therefore it would be assured that the 4.x branch is maintained in
> parallel for a long time, until the 5.x branch has become very stable, wich
> also will bind resources but could be done be an independent team.

According to Robert's (not my) proposal there are even three teams: One 
maintaining 4.x for a time, one working on 4.5 and one for 5.0 .
I argue that a) 4.5 can be either cosmetic changes only or a 5.0pre if 
you don't want to waste time on back-and forward-compat issues, b) 4.x 
should be maintained by those who are interested in it and have it in 
production, c) we already have more teams than we can sustainably 
handle, so a 4.x team and a 5.x team is enough.

> Old extensions would continue to run in the 4.x branch, but mayor
> alterations would be necessary to port them to in 5.x branch.

I don't see why this should be the case. The core-extension connection 
is rather thin and I am sure that *backward* compatibility is no 
problem. But you seemed to be worried about forward compat, so that new 
stuff runs on old TYPO3 or PHP4. This is impossible without sacrificing 
all the advantages of the new platform.

Greetings,
Michael